Cameras are commonly used to capture an image of a scene including one or more objects. The color of light reflected from the objects in the scene will vary according to the color of the illuminant that is illuminating the scene. For example, daylight at midday is bluer than in the morning or afternoon which includes more yellow. As a result thereof, for example, a white object captured with a typical film type camera will appear as a different color when captured at midday than in the morning or afternoon.
Digital cameras typically include a program that first estimates the color of the illuminant, and subsequently adjusts all of the colors in an input image according to the color of the illuminant. This is commonly referred to as white balance correction. With white balance correction, the digital camera attempts to compensate for variations in the colors in the input image caused by illuminants of different colors, and the actual color of the objects in the scene are more accurately represented in the provided image.
Unfortunately, existing white balance correction programs have not been able to quickly and accurately estimate the correct illuminant in all situations. As a result thereof, the color correction is not satisfactory in all situations. Further, some white balance correction programs are extremely complex to implement and are computationally expensive.